Hispaniola quiz 9.12-13.12
1. Name the nation that lies between Cuba and the Dominican Republic. __
2. Which island is the largest US Territory in the Caribbean? __ __
3. Which is the only consecutively-doubled letter in the name of the great sea bounded by the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles and the coasts of Central and South America? __
4. This nation lies south of Cuba and west of Haiti: __ .
5. This island nation is adjacent to the coast of Venezuela: __ .
6. This Kenyan city lies at 1S, 36E: __ .
7. The capital of Indonesia is the center of a megalopolis of some 26 million people. It is Jakarta. Write its coordinates.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Christopher Columbus' Tomb in Seville Cathedral, Spain
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Earth currents / Gulf Stream quiz
Gulf Stream quiz
1. Columbus was not the first European to voyage to the New World. T / F
2. The capital of the Bahamas: __ .
3. Atlantic islands about 600 miles east of the South Carolina / Georgia border: __ .
4. Caribbean sea snail: __ .
5. Word for a sailboat race: __ .
6. Linking a tale about impoverished island kids with BB guns to the Caribbean is part of a learning or memory strategy called a __ .
7. In Jamaica people mostly speak English or a patois. In the Dominican Republic the language is Spanish. In Haiti the dominant language is __ .
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Sailing in the social studies: know the basic parts of a sloop
Sloop:
- hull (body of boat)
- single mast
- boom
- mainsail
- jib
- keel
- rudder
- tiller or wheel
Starboard and port
bow and stern
Sailing is a slow sport (raising and lowering sails, etc) but deeply in touch with nature. It is mostly a sport of the wealthy class. But, of course, anyone can sail.
Some sailors love the silence and purity of this mode of transport, others love the aeronautical study that can accompany a deep understanding of the sailing process.
Learn sailing on Cross Lake amidst lots of sloops at the Shreveport Yacht Club.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Cristobal Colon, aka Christopher Columbus: four voyages over some 12 years
Cristobal Colon, aka Christopher Columbus: four voyages over some 12 years, a photo by trudeau on Flickr.
The voyages of Columbus initiated European colonization of the American continents, and are thus of great significance in world history, says Wikipedia.
Christopher Columbus was a navigator and an admiral for Castile, a country that later founded modern Spain.
He made four voyages to the Americas, with his first in 1492, which resulted in what is widely referred to as the Discovery of the Americas.[2]
The discovery of the Americas has variously been attributed to others. For example, the Vikings (c. 1000) had previously established a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.
While Columbus was not the first European to voyage to the New World and did not actually reach the mainland until his third voyage in 1498 (when he reached South America, and the fourth voyage, when he reached Central America), his discoveries led to the major European sea powers sending expeditions to the New World to build trade networks and colonies and to convert the native people to Christianity.
Columbus died an unfulfilled man. About 1500 the king and queen fired him as colonial governor because he insisted on enslaving and killing indigenous peoples.
Beware the Bermuda Triangle, a region of nefarious Urban Legend
The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and surface vessels are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances, says Wikipedia.
Popular culture has attributed these disappearances to the paranormal or activity by extraterrestrial beings.[1]
Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the incidents were spurious (false), inaccurately reported or embellished by later authors.
Caribbean treat: the fried meat from the large sea snail called the Conch
Pronounce it "conk." The meat of conches is used as food, either eaten raw, as in salads, or cooked, as in fritters (fried), chowders, gumbos, and burgers.
All parts of the conch meat are edible.[2] However, some people find only the white meat appetizing.
In Regattas, the Haitian sloops used as work boats become temporary racing craft
Regattas are important social events in many family island settlements in the Caribbean, says Wikipedia.
Regattas usually feature one or more days of sailing by old-fashioned work boats as well as an onshore festival.
A sloop (from Dutch sloep, in turn from French chaloupe) is a sail boat with a single mast and a fore-and-aft rig comprising a mainsail and a single foresail.
Sunday, September 09, 2012
Indie work: Comparing the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the voyage of the Mars Rover
Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus (born about 1446, died 1506) Sebastiano del Piombo (Sebastiano Luciani) (Italian, Venetian, ca. 1485–1547) 1519 . MET, NYC, a photo by renzodionigi on Flickr.
- Colorful title.
- "Boom!" opening.
- Documentation in first para.
- Integrate the topics through the entire essay. In other words, do not write separate paras on the 2 topics and finish with a brief integrated closing.
- Base the story on facts (1492-1508). Details (million-watt laser, . Examples (Bahamas, Cuba, Hispaniola).
Use comparison terms such as "but," "while," "on the other hand," "yet," etc.
- Typed. 16 pt Arial.
Caribbean: do impoverished youngsters always seem to be packing a BB rifle?
Plinking small iguanas, rodents and birds for the family stewpot, the youth of the Caribbean nations always seem to have a BB gun at their side.
In truth, I made up this story as a mnemonic. Can you explain the import of this mnemonic tale?
The big islands are called the Greater Antilles.
- Near the islands is the Yucatan Peninsula, home to the notable resort islands of Cancun and Cozumel.
- Cuba, aside from Havana a mystery to the US because of the trade embargo.
- Haiti, often called the most impoverished nation in the western hemisphere, has an Afro-French-American culture.
- Dominican Republic is on the same island as Haiti but has a Spanish culture. Home of one of Columbus' first HQ's.
- Puerto Rico ia a US Territory. In 9
'93 and '98 the people voted to remain a territory (US citizenship but cannot vote) and not become a US state. But the issue comes up for a vote again in Nov.
- US Virgin Islands are named for the Virgin Queen, the British queen, Elizabeth I, who never married though her reign was long: 1533 - 1603.
- Jamaica was British for a long time so the Rasta dialect is British-African. It's the home of reggae music.
The smaller islands are grouped under the name Lesser Antilles.
- Trinidad & Tobago have an unusual diversity in ethnic profile. Many Asians as well as African peoples and Euros make their home in Trinidad.
What can we learn from the mostly-impoverished peoples of the Caribbean? Their greatest gifts to the world are in colorful art made from scraps (Haiti, Jamaica), in music (reggae, son, soca, etc)
and cooking (jerk chicken, fried plantains, ceviche, etc). Otherwise, their pace of life is notably slow and close to nature.
Saturday, September 08, 2012
Sailing in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico round the southern tip of Florida
1. Leaving Miami in 24 foot sloop, should the sails be set for Bermuda or the Bahamas?
2. Should the sloop head for Freeport or Nassau?
3. In what state is there a Nassau in the US?
4. Based on the map key, about how many miles are spanned by the Bahama islands?
5. About how many miles are there between the southern tip of the US and Cuba?
6. The next stop in this sail voyage might be the capital of Cuba: __ .
7. After taking on supplies, the rudder is set for the American tourist town famous for the gatherings seen each day to toast the sunset: __ __ .
8. Sailing north to Miami, the boat will be aided by the natural force of the __ __ .
9. Actually, landing the boat in a Cuban port is against US law. Because the US is struggling against the communist government in Cuba, we do not allow trade with the island nation. Such a prohibition against trade is called an __ .
10. Sailing parallel to the Florida Keys the boat is running close to the __ National Park.
Thursday, September 06, 2012
Cosmic geography: essay on the Mars Rover story; 10 pts, due Sept 12-13
Answer the 12 questions in the Mars Rover study guide. Then compose a brief essay on the Mars rover using the questions as your outline.
- About 4 - 5 sentences, using examples (microbes) and detail (million-watt laser).
- Include "according to" with a source, such as Time.com or Wikipedia.org, in the first para.
- Clever title.
A visit to Mars
1. b 2. 13,000 mph 3. 10 4. T 5. T 6. B 7. H20 8. photo 9. T 10. F 11. T
12. Plutonium.
Mars in fiction:
The War of the Worlds (1898) by H. G. Wells. Features an attack on England by cephalothoracic Martians, and their later vulnerability to disease.
The Martian Chronicles (1950) by Ray Bradbury. Features human-like Martians with telepathic abilities. They have an advanced culture, but the human explorers are greeted with incomprehension and eventually the Martian civilisation is destroyed by human disease.
Might you include Dallas-Ft Worth in the Arklatex?
Can Dallas call itself a citizen of the Arklatex?
Is Dallas-Ft Worth part of the Arklatex, a region where 3 states meet? At 2.5 hours driving time, they are not too far from Shreveport, which is definitely part of the Arklatex. Yet traditionally they are not proximate enough to qualify. Shreveport and Dallas share a line of latitude, approx 32 degrees north, but it is not relevant to the definition of Arklatex.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
Map of the day: the Sunshine State / What Florida business is one that Louisiana might emulate?
Disneyworld!
This successful institution provides entertainment, education, fun and jobs. And it is easy on the environment.
Who knew the town of Orlando before Disneyworld?
Orlando Bloom?
At any rate, Shreveport has SciPort, which is a step in the right direction. But think about it: there's no impressive amusement park in the Arklatex.
Map of Florida . . .
- Miami
- West Palm Beach
- Jacksonville
- Key West
- Florida keys archipelago
- Tampa and Tampa Bay
- Tallahassee, the capital
- Pensacola, part of what the NY Times calls the Redneck Riviera (the original Riviera is part of the French Mediterranean coast).
- Everglades Natl Park
- Lake Okeechobee
- Gulf Stream (blue, warm and flowing ocean stream) flowing through the Straits of Florida and across the Atlantic.
- Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic
- the Bahamas, Georgia, Alabama are the neighbors.
Quiz on Latitude, longitude next class; review below and on Wikipedia
Sharpen your review of the coordinates by using wikipedia and these practice locations . . .
- 1N, 104E
- 33S, 18E
- 24S, 47W
- 30N, 31E
- 34N, 118W
- 26N, 80W
- 36N, 140E
- 45N, 74W
- 32N, 94W
Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Shreveport, Cairo, Egypt, Cape Town, South Africa, Miami, Singapore, Tokyo, Japan, Montreal, Canada
Define
- Equator, Prime meridian
- Is Shreveport's Line Ave a meridian? yes.
- Is King's Hwy? No.
- Why?
Caribbean nation report: 2-student powerpoint presentations due Sept 10 - 11
Choose a Caribbean nation and choose a partner for the research.
Tell your teacher the nation you've chosen.
Clever title.
5 slides.
Bulleted info (brief, like 1 - 4 words); maybe 3 items per slide.
One slide is a map.
Slide 6 for documentation. At least 3 sources.
Arial, 16 - 18 pt.
Brief in-class presentations. 12 pts.
Enjoy.
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
Curiosity: facts in the Mars rover story from Time
A visit to Mars
1. Number of miles traveled between earth and Mars: 104 __ a) thousand b) million c) billion d) quadrillion.
2. The speed of the spacecraft before entering the landing phase: ___ miles per hour.
3. The Mars rover represents some __ years of work.
4. A Martian year is almost equivalent to two Earthly years. T / F
5. Scientists believe that Mars once fostered tiny living organisms called microbes. T / F
6. The rover landed in Gale __ . a) plain b) crater c) river d) storm.
7. The inquiry is looking for evidence of __ .
8. The direction in which the rover will be driven will be determined by scientists' examinations of the __ shots.
9. A galactic forensic lab is part of the rover's deck. T / F
10. The million-watt laser will primarily destroy the lunar roaches that have obstructed refueling in past missions. T / F
11. The chemical composition of Martian rocks will be analyzed by observing the light emanating from them. T / F
12. The rover has a power generator whose fuel is __ .
Mars in fiction:
The War of the Worlds (1898) by H. G. Wells. Features an attack on England by cephalothoracic Martians, and their later vulnerability to disease.
The Martian Chronicles (1950) by Ray Bradbury. Features human-like Martians with telepathic abilities. They have an advanced culture, but the human explorers are greeted with incomprehension and eventually the Martian civilisation is destroyed by human disease.
Social studies career studies: Chinese robot waiters begin encroachment upon jobs that were formerly all-human
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/22/china%E2%80%99s-robot-waiters-no-tipping-necessary/
Fatitude! Prime rib! My little archipelago! Geo Magnet 9.4.12
Your teacher remembers "latitude" by the rhyming word, "fatitude." A harmless mnemonic.
Can you get a prime rib in Greenwich, England? yes, you can. Medium rare, if you will! You can also see the Royal Observatory, the place where the Prime Meridian was established.
In history, latitude was calculated by observing with quadrant or astrolabe the inclination of the sun or of charted stars. But longitude seemed an insoluble problem.
About 1773 John Harrison, a self-educated English clockmaker, invented the marine chronometer, says Wikipedia. It was a key piece in solving the problem of accurately establishing longitude at sea, thus revolutionising and extending the possibility of safe long distance sea travel.[3]
A US archipelago: the Florida Keys.
Bring an orange or other orb if you want to make a papier mache hemisphere in class.
Indie work -
A comparison essay on the geography of storms Isaac and Katrina, '05.
Monday, September 03, 2012
The Rivers are Roads quiz and 2-sentence essay, 9.4-5
1. River that forms the boundary between Texas and Mexico: __ __ .
2. The border between Texas and Oklahoma is mostly defined by one river: __ __ .
3. Most of the border between Texas and Louisiana is defined by the __ River.
4. Dallas, Shreveport, Monroe, Jackson, MS, and Los Angeles have something in common. a) longitude b) latitude c) humidity d) petroleum.
5. The Vieux Carre means the "Old section" and, in Louisiana, refers to the __ __ .
6. The city of New Orleans developed in a __ bend in the river, thus giving the city one of its nicknames, the __ City. (same answer, both blanks)
7. In the Katrina story of 2005, the city's problem was mainly the a) soil b) canals c) Lake Pontchartrain d) levees.
The last question will be scored as a mini-essay for 3 pts. 8. Might a definition of the term "Arklatex" include Dallas-Ft Worth? In a two-sentence answer, use the term "latitude" and "proximity."
Proximity means "closeness."
Add a clever title.
The beginning of an extra-terrestrial geography story: Mars and the Curiosity Rover
Time magazine.com
Sometimes the wildest ideas work best. NASA’s latest Mars lander transformed an engineering team’s high-risk brainstorming into reality on Sunday, safely lowering the 1 ton, $2.5 billion Curiosity rover into Mars’ Gale Crater while reminding us to think twice before laughing off the quirky spaceships in old science-fiction movies.
“This rocked!” a grinning Richard Cook, the mission’s deputy project manager, told an auditorium filled with exuberant colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif. “Seriously, wasn’t that cool?”
It was, in fact, cool, because Curiosity — a car-size mobile laboratory that’s bigger and more advanced than any of its predecessors — finished its 104 million-mile journey with a landing as dramatic as it was improbable. The touchdown required an extraordinary sequence of events designed to slow the incoming spacecraft from a blistering 13,000 m.p.h. to 2 m.p.h. in just seven minutes. Among the new tools in play: a 51-ft.-diameter parachute with eight suspension lines — the biggest ever used in an extraterrestrial landing — and retrorockets designed to slow the craft almost to a hover. Then there was the little matter of the spacecraft’s transforming itself into a sky crane just prior to landing, using nylon cords to lower Curiosity the final 25 ft. to the ground.
As it turned out, the much-hyped “seven minutes of terror” that began when the spacecraft entered the Martian atmosphere instead became seven minutes of breathless cheers — guided entry, parachute deployment, heat-shield separation — passed by uneventfully.
“Standing by for sky crane,” announced flight-dynamics engineer Al Chen, who provided commentary from the mission control room. The awaited terror finally hit; the lab fell silent. Then, after a slight pause, Chen’s smooth voice returned. “Touchdown confirmed!” he shouted at 10:32 p.m. Pacific time.
The scientists and engineers, many of whom spent 10 years working on the mission, burst into cheers and even tears as the tense seven minutes gave way to 15 jubilant minutes.
With the theatrics done, Curiosity is now set to begin a 98-week mission — one Martian year — hunting for signs that Mars offers, or once offered, a home for microbial life.
Engineers intentionally risked landing the rover inside a crater rather than in a safer, wide-open flood plain for good reason: a plain is, well, plain. Instead, NASA has for the first time placed a rover inside a geological treasure trove.
Gale Crater is a hole next to a mountain, and as we’ve all known since the first time we stepped into a puddle, water and water-driven sediment tend to gather in holes. There will surely be no water around today, but the chemical evidence of it — and perhaps even of the biology it may once have supported — should remain. The proximity of Mount Sharp, just 6 miles away, provides an entirely different kind of scientific target: a heap of layered sediment some two-thirds the height of Mount Everest. That could prove to be an open geological book, with millions of years’ worth of Martian strata on display.
NASA plans to send the probe as far as 12 miles from the landing site, grinding up soil samples and analyzing atmospheric conditions as it makes its way up the mountain.
“We’re hoping to find materials that interacted with water,” says John Grotzinger, the mission’s project scientist and a geologist at the California Institute of Technology.
Of course, if someone dropped you onto another planet, you’d have your smart phone snapping photos the second you arrived. That’s exactly what Curiosity did, in the form of the black-and-white thumbnail images it sent to Earth just minutes after landing. But those pictures aren’t souvenirs. They’re hazcam (hazard-avoidance camera) images that scientists will study to spot any potential obstructions that could hamper movement.
They also want to take time to ensure that no technical problems will prevent Curiosity from extending a vertical “lookout mast” that is loaded with additional cameras and will reach a height of about 7 ft. above the surface.
For Mars aficionados, the first of those milestones are the color pictures, which should arrive on Earth a day after landing. Shot from the rover’s Descent Imager, the photos were taken as the rover approached the surface of Gale Crater and will show the first-ever view aboard a spacecraft landing on Mars. They will also help scientists pinpoint the lander’s location.
Curiosity’s main eyeballs will open up once the mast is extended, which could happen as early as three days after landing. That’s when four navigation cameras (navcams) will begin taking 1-megapixel stereo pictures in a 360-degree circle around the rover. The navcams are designed to look in all directions — including up and down — and have a enough resolution to spot the equivalent of a golf ball 27 yards away. Navcam images will not only give a 3-D view but also help scientists and engineers decide where they want to drive the rover and what surface features to study.
Thankfully, Curiosity is much more than a mechanical paparazzo. The instrument suite is 10 times as massive as any previous rover’s, led by a robotic arm that is part spectrometer, part rock imager, part chemistry lab. Curiosity’s deck harbors an interplanetary CSI lab capable of separating gases or heating powdered samples to identify organic compounds.
And atop the mast, in addition to the bristle of cameras, is an instrument that can fire a million-watt laser beam at rocks up to 23 ft. away, vaporizing them enough for an onboard spectrometer to analyze light from the pinhead-size sparks the rocks will give off, revealing their chemical composition.
Shooting X-rays at nearby rock samples, another task on the agenda, will excite electrons into fingerprint-like signals that identify minerals. “With X-ray diffraction, we can really nail down what kind of clay mineral is there and how those rocks have formed,” says Crisp. Finally — and most tantalizingly — Curiosity will sniff the Martian sky for atmospheric methane, a telltale hint of current organic life.
Engineers say the rover should have an easier time maintaining power than its predecessors, which suffered from dust accumulating atop their solar panels. Curiosity relies on a shoebox-size nuclear generator that turns heat generated by decaying plutonium into electrical power for the onboard batteries.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
A brief study of the Crescent City: old New Orleans
- Miss R
- crescent bend
- up river, down river
- Gulf of Mexico
- French Quarter / Vieux Carre ("old quarter")
- Audubon Park
- Metairie
- Lower Ninth Ward
- Lake Pontchartrain
- Industrial Canal & Intracoastal Waterway
- High land, non-flooded
- Tulane, Loyola, Xavier, Dillard, UNO, SUNO.
- Birth of jazz music.
- Katrina flooding, 2005.
Ride a storm from Africa to Louisiana
On your storm season map:
- Atlantic, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean
- 4 continents
- arrows, in color, showing major currents
- identify the Canary current, equatorial current, Trade winds, Gulf Stream
- With one line show a current connection between Senegal and Louisiana
Named for Huracan, the Carib god of evil, the hurricane is an amazing yet destructive natural phenomenon that occurs about 40 to 50 times worldwide each year, says About.com.
Hurricane season takes place in the Atlantic, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and Central Pacific from June 1 to November 30 while in the Eastern Pacific the season is from May 15 to November 30.
Due to the Coriolis effect, the regions between 5° and 20° north and south of the equator are the belts where hurricanes can form (there is not enough rotary motion between 5° north and south.
The term cyclone is used in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea and the term typhoon is used in the Pacific Ocean north of the equator and west of the International Dateline.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Students may have an adventure in the classic Caribbean dishes
Am planning a Caribbean meal that could be prepared at home by students and parents and sampled in geography class. Some of the dishes I'm investigating . . .
- Jerk chicken: Jerk is a style of cooking native to Jamaica in which meat is dry-rubbed or wet marinated with a very hot spice mixture called Jamaican jerk spice, says Wikipedia.
Jerk seasoning is traditionally applied to pork and chicken. It principally relies upon two items: allspice (called "pimento" in Jamaica) and Scotch bonnet peppers (among the hottest peppers on the Scoville scale). Other ingredients include cloves, cinnamon, scallions, nutmeg, thyme, garlic, and salt.
Black beans, yellow rice:
What makes Caribbean black beans so good? They're flavored with an enticing combination of refreshing ginger, sweet pineapple and orange juice, aromatic allspice, and savory thyme. Spooning Caribbean black beans atop a bowl of white or brown rice makes a happy, humble vegetarian dish that you'll find yourself returning to again and again.
Tostones, or fried plantains:
Fried plantain is an dish cooked wherever plantains grow, from West Africa through Central Africa to East Africa,and in many parts of Southeast Asia such as Indonesia, where fried snacks are popular, says Wikipedia.
Fried plantain may be served as a snack, a starter or as a side dish to a main course, such as Jollof rice, spicy barbecued meat, tomato stew or beans. It is made in different ways: salted or non salted, cut into "ears" "fingers" or diced.
Fried plantain is also eaten in some countries in South America or Caribbean where African influence is present.. For example, in the Dominican Republic, it is common to cut plantains in slices, then smash them and, finally, fry them.
Caribbean foods: the banana-like vegetable called a plantain
Plantains are a member of the banana family, says grabemsnacks.com.
They are a starchy, low in sugar variety that is cooked before serving as it is unsuitable raw. It is used in many savory dishes somewhat like a potato would be used and is very popular in Western Africa and the Caribbean countries. It is usually fried or baked.
Plantains are native to India and are grown most widely in tropical climates.
Plantains are sometimes referred to as the pasta and potatoes of the Caribbean.
Sold in the fresh produce section of the supermarket, they usually resemble green bananas but ripe plantains may be black in color.
Healthy Snack assignment . . .
On a regular basis students in social studies can win up to 5 points for bringing healthy snacks to class.
Best examples -
Raw vegetables, such as celery, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, green pepper, green beans, cucumbers, mushrooms or zucchini may be served with a lowfat dip.
Fresh fruit in season, cut in slices or halves, such as apples, oranges, bananas, peaches, grapefruit, grapes, melons, pears, plums or strawberries.
Lowfat quick breads and muffins, such as pumpkin, zucchini, banana or bran.
Non-sugared cereals, snack mixes made with popcorn and whole grain cereal.
Lowfat yogurt with fresh, frozen or canned fruit.
Shakes with lowfat milk or yogurt and fruit.
Unsweetened fruit juices.
Substitute for the snack? A brief essay on healthy eating and non-healthy consumption in the student's life.
Geography Magnet: Hypotheses
Mississippi . . .
- Jackson
- Biloxi
- Vicksburg
- the Miss. R. delta, home of the blues
- Pearl R
- Miss R
- Gulf of Mexico
- Alabama
- Tennessee
- Arkansas
- Louisiana
- BB King
- Elvis
- Memphis, TN
On a sphere, the non-intuitive, curved route is shortest; it's called the Great Circle Route.
On a sphere, the non-intuitive, curved route is shortest; it's called the Great Circle Route., a photo by trudeau on Flickr.
Great-circle navigation is the practice of navigating a vessel (such as a ship or aircraft) along a track that follows a great circle, says Wikipedia.
A great circle track is the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a planetary body, assuming a perfect spherical model.
The goal of geography class this week is to make papier mache spheres - so that a Great Circle Route may be drawn.
Future Teachers are Mentors and Web Tutors, says Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy.org
The Khan Academy is a non-profit[2] educational organization created in 2006 by Bengali-American[3] educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School, says Wikipedia.
With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 3,300 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube.
They teach mathematics, history, healthcare and medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, macroeconomics, microeconomics, and computer science.[4]
Sunday, August 26, 2012
An early look at this week's Robot quiz
The Robot quiz for non-robots
1. The high school-level social studies project is one that requires students to demonstrate competence in using the __ method.
2. Gathering evidence in the social studies project must be accomplished via quoting articles, books and at least one __ .
3. Which Arkansas mountain range is found the state's north? a) Ouachita b) Ozarks.
4. Which Texas city is notable for digging a ship channel to make the city a port? The channel connects the inland city with a bay and thus connects to the Gulf of Mexico.
__ .
5. In the NY Times story on robotics, the famous electronics giant, the Philips Corporation, is mentioned. Philips, inventor of the cassette tape (1962), is a company based in the nation of the __ .
6. "Video cameras guide them through feats well beyond the capability of the most dexterous human." "Dexterous" must mean a) having physical or mental agility b) high achievement in reading comprehension c) carefully trained.
7. The NY Times story suggests that 10 robots ("about a tenth as many as the plant in the Chinese city of Zhuhai") can equal the labor of __ humans. a) 20 b) 50
c) 100 d) 1000.
8. Name of the much-publicized Chinese manufacuring giant that makes iPhones, among many products: a) Foxconn b) Zuhai c) Flextronics.
Find parking early when attending Back to School Night: 6 - 8 pm Tues, Aug 28
Parking! Finding a place to park your vehicle on Back to School Night at Magnet is not easy. Though the event begins at 6 pm, arriving much earlier is a smart idea.
There's plenty of prep work going on prior to 6 pm so you will not be lonely. And you can access free wifi across the campus.
First-year parents should report to the PAC if you arrive before 6:20. After that time the idea would be to follow your student's locator sheet. There will be numerous guides on campus to help you quickly find the right classroom.
Cassava comes to Shreveport via Osodi International Market, 2030 LineAve
Shreveporttimes.com/Adam Duvernay
Dorcas Oyefara was tired of traveling to Texas just to stock her pantry. So she and her husband opened Osodi International Market on Line Avenue in Shreveport.
"No one was selling African foods here before this," said Oyefara, who retired from teaching school and left Nigeria in 2009 to follow her husband, Ben Oyefara, to Monroe. "We used to have to go to Houston or Dallas to buy the things I grew up eating. There was a void to fill. We couldn't find these things really in all of north Louisiana."
Now they are part of a growing community of international grocers in Shreveport-Bossier City.
Oyefara said she felt unfulfilled when she joined her husband in Monroe, where he has been serving as a physician since 1999. In May, she came to Shreveport, where he also teaches at LSU-Shreveport. And together they opened the market that specializes in African and Caribbean foods.
It's an unassuming place, easy to drive past without a second look. Inside are typical-looking shelves and stocks in a sterile-looking room; but the wares and supplies are foreign even when they seem familiar.
African beans, yams and yam products and African spices are stacked with packaged goods imported directly from Nigeria. The frozen goods — cassava leaves, bitters and goat meats, the Oyefaras usually must pick up in Dallas. Their Jamaican spices, ackees and other Caribbean foods are shipped from Texas and Miami.
And in the cooler are bottles of Fanta of a shape and taste usually unfamiliar to Americans. "When people drink this one, they don't want the other anymore," Ben Oyefara said.
Although the Oyefaras' business is small and still working to grow, they say they've reached out to a growing population of Africans and Caribbean natives in the area. "They come in and they are from everywhere," Ben Oyefara said. "They are from Ghana, Tunisia, from all the Caribbean islands, from Kenya and the Congo. They didn't have access to their native foods. They have our foods now."
more at shreveporttimes.com.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Scientific method and the Social Studies Fair Project; deadline for paper Fri, Oct 26
Not due as a paper until Fri, Oct 26, the social studies fair project is perhaps best handled as a collaborative effort. Up to 4 students may work together.
The goal for my class is to demonstrate competence in the scientific method. The essential steps are -
- Question / problem
- hypothesis
- gathering of evidence
- conclusion
- bibliography.
I am interested in a paper that demonstrates the ability to gather evidence from no fewer than 4 sources. There should be at least 1. a book source. 2. two articles.
3. an interview.
The principle evidence gathering will take place via a review of the literature. Experiments are not required.
To protect students when working in groups, I will expect a section that reports the division of work. Let's say that Larry Moncrief researched and wrote all of the evidence gathering section, and Mary Bishop contributed only the hypothesis and the conclusion and Will Slaughter contributed only 6 photos. I think that I would need to inquire as to whether one student might get a higher score than the other 3 based on time and responsibility.
Project Topics and Disciplines
Anthropology: Ancient civilizations, Native Americans, customs, festivals, types of shelter and food, religion, etc.
Economics: Money, manufacturing, trade, transportation of goods and services, communication, inflation, stock exchange, common market, government budgets, etc.
Geography: Ecology, foreign countries, lands and people, maps, flooding, rivers, lakes, cities, conservation, etc.
History: Story of mankind, historical events, places, biographies, personalities, wars, etc.
Political Science: Government agencies, FBI, crime, U.S. Constitution, courts system, international governments, etc.
Sociology: Families, crime, mental health, propaganda, life styles, dreams, television, media, etc.
In considering a topic these things should be kept in mind:
1. Value- -The topic should she light on some significant aspect of human experience.
2. Originality- - If a project has been the subject of a previous investigation, the proposed new study should either furnish substantial new evidence or provide a significant new interpretation.
3. Practicality- - Sources must be available which one may use conveniently and without fear of censorship. The scope of the subject should be neither too limited nor too broad.
4. Unity- - Every project must have a unifying theme, or be directed to a certain question or thesis, so that there is a point of departure, the development of the subject, and specific conclusions.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
The founders' story, featuring Tarshar, Caddo chief, Larkin Edwards, pioneer and translator, and Henry Miller Shreve, engineer and entrepreneur
The story begins with massive sand bars blocking most of the Red River waterway in the region around Shreveport. Brief notes below:
- Shreve won a contract from the federal govt to clear the "Great Raft," or clogged channels.
- Shreve developed a special device to do the work: a double-hulled steam boat with tower and winch. It could pull massive snags - tree trunks - from the sand and mud.
- Later Shreve also developed the prototype for the classic steam boat for southern rivers - featuring a shallow-draft, flat hull.
- Chief Tarshar could do little against the might of the US Army. His people were dying of disease. The Anglo settlers disrupted the Caddo farming and hunting and gathering lifestyle.
- Larkin Edwards was the rare Anglo fellow who learned the Caddo language and was an active friend of the tribe.
- In 1835 the US govt bought the Caddo land in NW Louisiana. The remuneration was supposed to be $30,000 in goods and some cash. There is much evidence that very little of the promised payment ever reached the Caddo.
- Silver Lake and Bayou Pierre, the slough of which runs close by the Magnet campus, were products of the blockage.
Please see more notes in the sketch.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
A new generation of uber machines: an update on jobs and robots
August 18, 2012
Skilled Work, Without the Worker
By JOHN MARKOFF, NYtimes.com
DRACHTEN, the Netherlands — At the Philips Electronics factory on the coast of China, hundreds of workers use their hands and specialized tools to assemble electric shavers. That is the old way.
At a sister factory here in the Dutch countryside, 128 robot arms do the same work with yoga-like flexibility. Video cameras guide them through feats well beyond the capability of the most dexterous human.
One robot arm endlessly forms three perfect bends in two connector wires and slips them into holes almost too small for the eye to see. The arms work so fast that they must be enclosed in glass cages to prevent the people supervising them from being injured. And they do it all without a coffee break — three shifts a day, 365 days a year.
All told, the factory here has several dozen workers per shift, about a tenth as many as the plant in the Chinese city of Zhuhai.
This is the future. A new wave of robots, far more adept than those now commonly used by automakers and other heavy manufacturers, are replacing workers around the world in both manufacturing and distribution. Factories like the one here in the Netherlands are a striking counterpoint to those used by Apple and other consumer electronics giants, which employ hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers.
“With these machines, we can make any consumer device in the world,” said Binne Visser, an electrical engineer who manages the Philips assembly line in Drachten.
Many industry executives and technology experts say Philips’s approach is gaining ground on Apple’s. Even as Foxconn, Apple’s iPhone manufacturer, continues to build new plants and hire thousands of additional workers to make smartphones, it plans to install more than a million robots within a few years to supplement its work force in China.
Foxconn has not disclosed how many workers will be displaced or when. But its chairman, Terry Gou, has publicly endorsed a growing use of robots. Speaking of his more than one million employees worldwide, he said in January, according to the official Xinhua news agency: “As human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache.”
The falling costs and growing sophistication of robots have touched off a renewed debate among economists and technologists over how quickly jobs will be lost. This year, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, made the case for a rapid transformation. “The pace and scale of this encroachment into human skills is relatively recent and has profound economic implications,” they wrote in their book, “Race Against the Machine.”
In their minds, the advent of low-cost automation foretells changes on the scale of the revolution in agricultural technology over the last century, when farming employment in the United States fell from 40 percent of the work force to about 2 percent today. The analogy is not only to the industrialization of agriculture but also to the electrification of manufacturing in the past century, Mr. McAfee argues.
Beyond the technical challenges lies resistance from unionized workers and communities worried about jobs. The ascension of robots may mean fewer jobs are created in this country, even though rising labor and transportation costs in Asia and fears of intellectual property theft are now bringing some work back to the West.
Take the cavernous solar-panel factory run by Flextronics in Milpitas, south of San Francisco. A large banner proudly proclaims “Bringing Jobs & Manufacturing Back to California!” (Right now China makes a large share of the solar panels used in this country and is automating its own industry.)
Yet in the state-of-the-art plant, where the assembly line runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are robots everywhere and few human workers. All of the heavy lifting and almost all of the precise work is done by robots that string together solar cells and seal them under glass. The human workers do things like trimming excess material, threading wires and screwing a handful of fasteners into a simple frame for each panel.
Such advances in manufacturing are also beginning to transform other sectors that employ millions of workers around the world. One is distribution, where robots that zoom at the speed of the world’s fastest sprinters can store, retrieve and pack goods for shipment far more efficiently than people. Robots could soon replace workers at companies like C & S Wholesale Grocers, the nation’s largest grocery distributor, which has already deployed robot technology.
Rapid improvement in vision and touch technologies is putting a wide array of manual jobs within the abilities of robots. For example, Boeing’s wide-body commercial jets are now riveted automatically by giant machines that move rapidly and precisely over the skin of the planes. Even with these machines, the company said it struggles to find enough workers to make its new 787 aircraft. Rather, the machines offer significant increases in precision and are safer for workers.
And at Earthbound Farms in California, four newly installed robot arms with customized suction cups swiftly place clamshell containers of organic lettuce into shipping boxes. The robots move far faster than the people they replaced. Each robot replaces two to five workers at Earthbound, according to John Dulchinos, an engineer who is the chief executive at Adept Technology, a robot maker based in Pleasanton, Calif., that developed Earthbound’s system.
Robot manufacturers in the United States say that in many applications, robots are already more cost-effective than humans.
See more at nytimes.com
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Shreve's snag boat: Red River Waterway Visitor Center
A brief comparison of Larkin Edwards and Henry M Shreve. Here's a teacher's sample essay:
The Diplomat and The Engineer: a comparison of Larkin Edwards and Henry Miller Shreve
"Rnnnggg-rnggr," was the sound made by the winches on the work boat designed by Henry Miller Shreve. It was snagboat. Its task was to wrench giant logs from the muck of the Red River as Shreve led the clearing of the Great Raft. A few miles away another pioneer, Larkin Edwards, smoked a peace pipe with Tarshar, chief of the Caddo people.
By learning the language of the Caddo the thoughtful Edwards was able to help the tribe as their interpreter, says caddohistory.com. In the 1835 negotiations which led to the US take-over of the Caddo lands in the Red River Valley, Edwards was given a gift of one square mile of land. He sold that land to the speculators who founded Shreve Town.
Meanwhile, the clearing of the river channel by Shreve ensured that settlers would fill the North Louisiana river bottom. In the process of clearing the raft, Shreve happened to cut off the river bend in which Edwards had established a store and post office. Edwards' site, the Coates Bluff landing on Stoner Hill, lost its river traffic and business.
But the port of Shreve Town prospered.
A sloshingly flowing quiz for geo class
1. The mounds at Poverty Point site are arranged in circular form around a central focal point. We call that a __ arrangement.
2. The architectural sites built by ancient Indigenous peoples have been neglected by historians because they were built from __ .
3. Monroe, Shreveport's latitudinal neighbor, lies upon the __ river. a) Ouachita b) Atachafalaya c) Pearl d) Sabine.
4. The principal trail used by Caddo people connected the state of __ to Louisiana.
5. Every day two great gifts arrive in Louisiana from distant Montana. They are the resources a) coal and electricity b) coal and timber
c) coal and water d) coal and petroleum.
6. Future conflicts between Louisiana and Texas may arise from claims of ownership in regards a key resource, __ .
7. In 3 sentences filled with rivers' names and types of resources, explain the importance of the Mississippi River Valley.
Terrific collage on the indigenous peoples of this region
This Indigenous People project by Brandy Sells represents a high standard. I would like to see all the top students equal the neatness of her work in future assignments.
Merriam-Webster's Notebook Atlas has arrived at Barnes & Noble Shreveport; cost is about $5
Looking forward to the day when all my students will have their Merriam Webster's Atlases in geography class.
At $5 the paperback resource center is a bargain.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Maps of the day: Louisiana, the watery state, and Shreveport-Bossier,cities on the Red
In Louisiana please be responsible for
- 8 municipalities
- 6 rivers
- 2 local lakes
- neighbor states
- dividing line between the French Catholic cultural region and the Anglo Protestant region.
- seafood (it is the biggest producer of crawfish in the world, supplying approximately 90%), cotton, soybeans, cattle, sugarcane, poultry and eggs, dairy products, and rice.
- petro-chemical products.
- tourism.
Louisiana is classified as an impoverished state, ranking around 45th in the US in average income.
Educational standards are similarly low in ranking. Yet the state ranks high in health issues and rate of incarceration. Please see
http://www.hopenetworks.org/addiction/FactSheets/LA%20Problems.htm for sobering statistics on the Bayou States' issues, which include a slipping population.
Population: 4.5 million.
Shreveport
- I-20, I-49, Texas Trail (Hwy 80), Red River Parkways (Fant and Teague), Youree Dr, Line Ave, King's Hwy, Stoner Ave,
- East and West Shreveport
- city population 200,000 +
- metro pop. 470,000
- ethnic breakdown (2010 census)
59.48% White,
37.68% African American,
0.42% Native American,
0.74% Asian,
0.04% Pacific Islander,
0.54% from other races, and
1.09% from two or more races
1.82% Hispanic or Latino of any race
The median income for a household in the Metro area was $32,974, and the median income for a family was $39,203.
- Bossier City: 68,000.
Assignment Aug 21-22: Map that identifies streets between your house and Magnet
Print a map that comprises the route between your house and Magnet.
Paste street labels on the map to identify the major streets that you traverse on your daily journey to Caddo Magnet.
Add color.
Snappy title on the top of the page.
Colorful border.
Map source at bottom right.
Louisiana's great indigenous center: the Mississippi valley site called Poverty Point
Louisiana's great indigenous center: the Mississippi valley site called Poverty Point, a photo by trudeau on Flickr.
Poverty Point (French: Pointe de Pauvreté) is a prehistoric earthworks of the Poverty Point culture, says Wikipedia.org.
It is now a historic monument located 15.5 miles from the current Mississippi River,[2] and situated on the edge of Maçon Ridge, near the village of Epps in West Carroll Parish, Louisiana.
Poverty Point comprises several earthworks and mounds built between 1650 and 700 BCE, during the Archaic period in the Americas.
The monumental construction is a group of six concentric, crescent ridge earthworks, divided by five aisles radiating from the center at the river bank. The site also has several mounds both on the outside and inside of the ring earthworks. The name "Poverty Point" came from the plantation which once surrounded the site.
The people who constructed it were hunter-gatherers rather than agriculturalists. They are a rare example of a complex hunter-gatherer society that constructed large scale monuments.
The vast majority of other prehistoric monuments, ranging from Stonehenge in England to the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt, were constructed by agricultural societies, in which crop surpluses allowed greater density of population and stratification of society.
Numerous imported items, consisting of projectile points and microliths, have been determined to have originated in the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains and in the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys.[5] Other materials derived from trade are soapstone from the southern Appalachian Mountains of Alabama and Georgia,[5] and copper and galena artifacts, indicating trade with the prehistoric copper-producing tribes in the upper Great Lakes region.[2]
Changes in temperature and precipitation such as increased flooding, caused an ecological imbalance that led to abandonment of Poverty Point.
Mound builder culture of the Indigenous people: the concentric mounds of Poverty Point site
The varying cultures collectively called Mound Builders were prehistoric inhabitants of North America who, during a 5,000-year period, constructed various styles of earthen mounds for religious and ceremonial, burial, and elite residential purposes.
Beginning with the construction of Watson Brake about 3400 BCE in present-day Louisiana, nomadic indigenous peoples started building earthwork mounds in North America nearly 1000 years before the pyramids were constructed in Egypt.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Social studies thinking: looking for the implications
A higher level of thinking: finding the implications in social studies reading and discussion.
The implication is something implied. It is suggested as naturally to be inferred or understood. Ex: to resent an implication of dishonesty.
2.
the act of implying: His implication of immediate changes surprised us.
In most of my classes the overwhelming number of students are those who have grown up in the Shreveport area. There's little "new blood." It implies that the local population is stagnant. My informal survey certainly does not prove anything. But the implication - that we might have a static population - may be worth pursuing.
A quiz on the Mississippi valley and regional history
1.The word for native people: a) indigent b) indigenous c) indeginous d) indingenous.
2. The most northerly of the states associated with the Caddo. __
3. Which is the most northerly of the Mississippi tributaries? __
5. Which state lies between Minnesota and Missouri on the western edge of the Mississippi? __
Name the significant river associated with the following -
1. Minnesota
2. Montana
3. Pennsylvania
4. Illinois
5. Texas
Assignment: illustrated lesson on the Caddo, the indigenous people of this region, due Fri, Aug 16
Caddo, the indigenous people of NW Louisiana and nearby Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, a photo by trudeau on Flickr.
Native people:
indigenous
1. originating or occurring naturally (in a country, region, etc.); native
2. innate (to); inherent (in)
[from Latin indigenus, from indigena indigene, from indi- in + gignere to beget]
The Texas Trail, aka Hwy 80, today's I-20, was originally the Caddo Trail. It was probably a series of broad but shady clearings owing to controlled burning of the underbrush and maintenance of the canopy trees.
Assignment for Fri, Aug 16, 10 pts -
- Research and create a one-page (in your notebook) illustrated map.
- Explanatory title at top.
- Name in upper right corner.
- Color.
- Basic map identifications.
- Neatness of line and lettering.
- Reflects reading about Caddo life: tattoos, hair styles, jewelry, dwelling, typical tree.
- Documentation (source or sources) in lower right corner.
- Creative response encouraged.
Why study the Mississippi River basin? It is one of the world's most powerful river networks
Mississippi River tributaries: Ohio R, Tenn R, Missouri R, Ark R, Red R, a photo by trudeau on Flickr.
A slow-moving internet: the Mississippi River and tributaries
1. Name the 5 states that lie adjacent to and west of the Miss. Their initials are MIMAL.
2. Name the 5 states that lie east of the Miss. Initials: WIKTM.
3. The Mississippi R. is the second longest in the US. Even longer is the Missouri. Name 2 states associated with the Missouri.
Choose from Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri.
4. The state in which the Mississippi begins its course: __. Minnesota.
5. The Miss. R. is connected to the Great lakes. T / F It is not connected by the natural course of the Mississippi. A canal called the Illinois Waterway was created to make a man-made connection.
6. The longest tributary on the east is the Ohio R. Name 2 additional states through which it passes. Choose fromPennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois.
7. Name the 5 Great Lakes of the US, giving their names as read from left to right. Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie Ontario.
8. Which tributary has its headwaters in Montana? Missouri R.
9. Which is more northerly, Memphis or St Louis? St Louis.
10. Which tributary begins in Texas? the Red River.
11. What is the significance of the Miss Valley? Recreation, waste disposal, water supply, fishing, grain export, petro-chemical exports and manufacturing exports are among the ways the Mississippi enriches the US.
12. Why is it like a slow-moving internet? Because it is a conduit for information, goods and services and profit.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
A routine for a 90-minute class . . .
We shall nearly always open with a brief quiz.
- multiple choice, mostly.
- open notes and text.
- questions based on notes published on the class blog.
Sometimes a very brief essay will also be presented.
Afterwards students will quietly work on sketching, identifications and implications of the Map of the Day.
Students will write 3 multiple-choice questions upon the map material.
Presentation of the lesson of the day is next. To be offered by the teacher or a designated student.
Visual, often video-based instruction, is next: usually it will be a short film or slide series but several times in the year there are longer movies to watch in class.
Next we move to groups - guided by the teacher. A paper construction is to be created and labeled. Scissors, colors, glue and paper: good media for learning.
Next, there should be a brief time for stress relief activities centered around deep breathing and stretching.
Silent reading is next. Teens live in a world today in which there are a wild array of distractions and little time for reading. The skill of note taking is to be enhanced.
Questions designed to enhance the skill of reading comprehension follow the note.
Straightening the classroom before leaving is important to every class.
World Geography / Robert E Trudeau at Caddo Magnet High
World Geography at Caddo Magnet High under Robert E Trudeau
Bienvenue! Geography class at Magnet is a place for establishing best practices for teens in thinking, writing and classroom life.
First, there is the class blog: http://mondotrudeau.blogspot.com. Updated each day, the blog is designed to help parent, student and teacher have a common ground in class notes, homework, tests and assignments.
The basic and steady homework assignment for all my students is Read the Blog - because quizzes and tests will be based largely on material found there.
Additionally, students are encouraged to cut and paste the academic material from the blog into a document that will be printed and brought to the classroom each class.
Open notes quizzes and tests are the dominant format for evaluation in my class. This style puts the emphasis on information management and reading comprehension.
Almost all days the class begins with a brief quiz based on the material from the prior class or the prior unit.
Brief essays written in class will be a steady feature of this class. As an avid writer, it is my pleasure to emphasize well-organized, grammatically-correct written communication.
Indie Work (independent) is what I call the additional writing that a student can submit to bolster their grade and pursue success in an individualized way. Students and parents appreciate flexibility in a class that is focused upon individual students rather than on a program.
Two requirements:
a) a $5 fee to pay the bus transportation that enables field trips. Soon the school will open a system enabling parents to pay fees electronically. Please do not send money until the program is announced.
b) a paperback atlas, the Merriam-Webster Notebook Atlas ($4.95 at Barnes & Noble, Spt). It will be required for and used in each class session.
Special features in my enriched classes include
- Nature Walks, taken as an academic activity; I use the delightful and safe Coates Bluff Nature Trail adjacent to the campus.
- Class meals; they are special occasions in which students bring cold food to share as part of our academic program.
Communication between parent and teacher is a strong component in ensuring success for the student.
Please do not hesitate to email me at trudeau11@gmail.com or my faculty address: retrudeau@caddo.k12.la.us. My phone is 318-272-6045 and I do have a text plan.
By the way, I currently have a 16 year-old son at Magnet, and share your concerns with academics and teen life. I also am parent to 3 grown children and have 2 grandchildren.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Litre of Light
In crowded wood and metal shacks in favelas across the world people typically do not have electricity.
Here's a video on how the problem can be alleviated with minimum expense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOl4vwhwkW8&feature=player_embedded
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Indigenous people: appreciating the Caddo life
Sources on Caddo folkways -
http://www.texasindians.com/caddo2.htm
http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/caddo/caddocustoms.htm
http://campus.kellerisd.net/Teachers/16179/Classroom%20Information/Caddo%20Tribe.pdf
http://arkarcheology.uark.edu/indiansofarkansas/index.html?pageName=The%20Caddo%20Indians
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